The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art
Fuel packages have traditionally been available to consumers as charcoal fuel and wood fire-log fuel. These combustible fuel packages are commonly used both for home and recreational purposes. Such fuel packages have experienced great popularity in recent years and are strongly desired for a variety of purposes, especially cooking and heat-generation, for example. In addition, these fuel packages have been primarily produced from wood materials, rather than annually renewable, and environmentally preferred biomass sources.
With respect to charcoal fuel packages, petroleum lighter fluids may be used with easy-lighting charcoals, the coal dust and filler materials in charcoal briquettes, and wood fire-logs. However, these petroleum lighter fluids are harmful to the environment, can soil the consumer or his/her clothing, and are relatively dangerous to use or store due to their flammability, and not food cooking safe.
There are many brands and varieties of cooking charcoal on the market, such as briquettes, chunk charcoal, and variations that contain petroleum based lighter fluid to allow lighting without the need for other starting apparatus. There are also charcoal brands which ignite easily by utilizing a paper packaging in combination with a petroleum starter that is lit in several places causing the charcoal to ignite.
Another wood fuel used in the art is wood fire-logs. Wood fire-logs are commonly produced as compressed or all-wood fire-logs. There are many types of compressed fire-logs on the market made from sawdust, sawdust-and-wax mixtures, recycled cardboard and other similar materials.
Well-known compressed sawdust-and-wax fire-logs are commonly sold in retail stores under various trade-names such as “Duraflame” and “Pine Mountain.” These compressed sawdust-and-wax fire-logs ignite easily because they are covered in paper that may be lit in several places. Once the paper covering is lit, the paper then ignites the fire-log, which itself has a low combustion threshold due to the presence of flammable petroleum wax materials that typically constitutes 50% to 60% of these fire-logs.
Many consumers avoid using petroleum wax with the sawdust-and-wax fire-log and seek more natural products made with just pure sawdust or other suitable vegetation material, including but not limited to, annually renewable biomass materials. These fire-logs are made by a fundamentally different process than the wax variety of fire-log, as the process uses extremely high pressure to cause a mechanical locking of fiber of the lignin in the wood, resulting in the bonding of the material into a solid log unit without the adhesive and binding characteristics of wax or other foreign materials. While this has the advantages of creating a solid log without binding agents, it also increases the combustion threshold of the log, making it difficult to light.
When such fire-logs are burned, it is only wood or biomass material burning and many consumers prefer the resulting fire from the standpoint of ecological concerns, odor and other esthetics, as well as the controllability of an all-wood and/or biomass fire as opposed to a fire maintained mostly by the combustion of wax. Wax-containing logs come with warnings not to poke them when burning and not to burn more than one at a time because of the problems with flaring of the wax. Wax logs have also been known to explode in fireplaces.
Often wood fire-logs may be difficult to light because of the denseness of the material, which may prohibit timely combustion. Various brands of wood fire-logs provide manufacturers' directions that involve chopping chunks off a fire-log, and using kindling to light those chunks, all in order to light the full fire-log. This process might work provided the amount of additional kindling is sufficient to ignite the chunks. However, this process often requires “standard fire-building” in situations when the manufacturer's instructions fail. “Standard fire-building” typically requires the placement of paper or other kindling and small pieces of dry wood around the full log in order to achieve ignition. Standard fire-building may also involve the use of newspaper, kindling and/or flammable fire starters that can create an unpleasant odor, especially when used indoors.
As noted above, lighting an all-wood and/or all-biomass fire-log is not easy. Existing brands of all-wood fire-logs come with multi-step instruction sheets requiring the person desiring a fire to chop up portions of the log, position the chopped portions in a specific arrangement with respect to the whole logs, and place additional kindling around or beneath the wood fire-logs. Despite following these instructions, the logs may not always light.